1. Field
Recently, portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) have become increasingly technically advanced and multifunctional. Because of the convenience of these devices, the devices have become a necessity of daily life.
For some portable devices, such as smartphones, PDAs, tablets, PCs, and so on, a touch screen that is directly usable can be provided as a primary input device for users to control the functions. Users of handheld devices can slide a finger to touch the items displayed by touch screen, issue a command, and execute or control operations corresponding to the selected items. For example, users can click a button design or icon on the touch screen to activate the drawing function, or they can click on a navigation button or icon on the touch screen to activate the GPS navigation function.
There is a need to provide the user with adequate experience and increase productivity by means of larger screens within the limits of portability.
The present disclosure addresses several methods and systems that aim to increase the display area. These devices are equipped with touch screens of various types, in particular mobile devices from different manufacturers and are known in the prior art. Mobile devices with larger screens are better for watching videos, playing games, and photo manipulation application, and moreover, for increasing productivity. Larger screens with greater softkeys allow also for more accurate typing.
As the cost of LCD panels decreases, it has also become less expensive to produce mobile devices with double screens and larger.
2. Description of the Related Art
The patent document US20120081270A1 of IMERJ LLC, published on Apr. 5, 2012, presents a dual-screen device having control logic to minimize or maximize a primary screen to a secondary screen, which can be embedded and displayed in different positions.
The patent document US20100207903A1, of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, published on Aug. 19, 2010, shows a mobile device with a detachable sub-display unit, which are joined by magnetic contacts.
The U.S. Pat. No. 7,667,707, published on Feb. 23, 2010, presents a computer system with multiple screens comprising a central computer system, which processes desktop environments equipped with several windows to remote monitors, multiple users or a combination of both.
The U.S. Pat. No. 8,108,782, of Motorola Mobility, published on Jan. 31, 2012, presents a method to control multiple monitors and data communication between screens.
The U.S. Pat. No. 7,561,116, of Microsoft Corporation, published on Jul. 14, 2009, presents a method to expand a monitor with multiple displays in the same housing.
The U.S. Pat. No. 7,549,154 B2, of Microsoft Corporation, published on Jun. 16, 2009, presents a method to expand the data from a main computer system to devices having screens.
The patent document U.S. 2012-0242596, of Acer Corporation, published on Sep. 27, 2012, refers to methods for sharing a screen for use in a server coupled to a plurality of devices via a network, with each device including at least one touch screen.
The present disclosure differs from the prior art in the following aspects:
It enables the sharing of the screen from the extension of the same between devices completely independently;
It considers possible combinations of the four sides of the screen to other screens, on their respective sides;
It addresses all screen rotations and orientations between the landscape mode (90, 270 degrees) and portrait mode (0, 180 degrees), while determining the portion of the composite image to be displayed on each screen: top, bottom, left, right of the screen composed;
It does not limit the display areas and regions sensitive to touch and gestures, allowing a larger screen fully functional for the user input;
It extends evenly on the screen, regardless of the application (phone, tv, multimedia, web browser, email, desktop/screen “Home”, etc.);
It does not merely limit that the interaction takes place between devices with screens of equal physical dimensions, proportions, or image resolutions;
It considers the use of alignment and sharing/extensions of the screen between the device completely independent of their respective screens, and
It extends the contact and side electric detection, magnetic, physical, accelerometer, or near field communication (NFC), or even transfer data at high speed between devices by WiGig (Wireless Gigabit), technology for wireless data transmission capable of transmitting data up to 12 times faster than current wireless standard.